Institute of Epidemiology and Healthcare, University College London, London, UK.
Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Sociol Health Illn. 2020 May;42(4):925-942. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13076. Epub 2020 Mar 12.
Apps on smartphones are increasingly used for self-care for depression and anxiety, yet how and why they are accessed, and their social effects, remain under-investigated. Sociologists have begun to theorise how these technologies affect and relate; crucial questions for a contemporary sociology of health. This study seeks to contribute to our conceptualisation of how digital health technologies are implicated in health by investigating the motivations, experiences and relations of people using mobile apps for depression or anxiety. We interviewed 14 individuals living in England with a diagnosis of depression or an anxiety disorder, who used smartphone apps as part of self-care. Analysis followed a thematic approach. Three themes were identified. Apps exist within relational contexts - alongside smartphones, beliefs about mental health and other support - which shape app use and lead to an imprecise, casual approach. People engage with apps in a straightforward and uncomplicated manner, leading to immediate symptomatic alleviation, but to limited longer term benefit. The contradiction between the apps' promise as tools of individual empowerment, with their ability to promote responsibilising frameworks that restrain users' reflexivity, is central to their implications. Apps can thus contribute to isolation from interpersonal support and promote reductionist biomedical conceptualisations of mental ill health.
智能手机上的应用程序越来越多地被用于抑郁和焦虑的自我护理，但它们是如何以及为何被使用的，以及它们的社会影响，仍未得到充分研究。社会学家已经开始从理论上探讨这些技术如何产生影响和相互关联；这是当代健康社会学的关键问题。本研究旨在通过调查使用移动应用程序治疗抑郁或焦虑的人的动机、体验和关系，为我们对数字健康技术如何影响健康的概念化做出贡献。我们采访了 14 名居住在英格兰的被诊断患有抑郁症或焦虑症的人，他们将智能手机应用程序作为自我护理的一部分。分析遵循主题方法。确定了三个主题。应用程序存在于关系背景中——与智能手机、心理健康观念和其他支持并存——这些背景塑造了应用程序的使用方式，并导致了不精确、随意的应用方式。人们以简单直接的方式使用应用程序，立即缓解了症状，但对长期的益处有限。应用程序作为个体赋权工具的承诺与其促进限制用户反思能力的责任框架的能力之间存在矛盾，这是其核心问题所在。因此，应用程序可能导致与人际支持的脱节，并促进对心理健康的简化生物医学概念化。
